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MNN First Nations Endorses Support Against Canada's Role in Palestinian Oppression & Israeli Apartheid

"Re: URGENT - Endorsements Requested

Hazem.
We completely support this statement against the Zionists of Israel's apartheid policies against the Indigenous Palestian People. We too have suffered genocide. 99% of our people were killed off in the biggest holocaust in all humanity. 115 million of our people were killed off by the Europeans to make way for the plunder of our land and resources that followed. Canada is guilty of developing some of these methods of attack such as reservations, passes, starvation, spreading diseases, theft of our children into residential school in which only half survived, outright murder and all manner of the slow death policies it perpetrates on us today. We continue to refuse to acquiesce to the colonial government's theft of our possessions. We stand in solidarity with you against these lethal sanctions that are meant to decimate you. Since Canada is built on the theft and exploitation of our land and resources, we the Indigenous people demand that our aid be immediately directed to our Indigenous brothers and sisters, the Palestinians.

Kahentinetha Horn, MNN Mohawk Nation News, www.mohawknationnews.com "

URGENT - Endorsements Requested

Dear Friends,

As many of you may know, conditions in Palestine have become tragically worse since Canada, the US and Europe implemented sanctions on the democratically elected Palestinian Authority. Canada was in fact the first country to withdraw its aid, an action that was one in a string of Canadian government decisions to give blind support for the Israeli state while punishing en masse the entire Palestinian population.

The statement below was drafted by members of Al-Awda Toronto (Palestine Right of Return Group) and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, as an attempt to get as many groups in Canada to sign on as opposition to Canada's cruel role in the oppression of Palestinians. We hope to collect as many organizational endorsements as possible by Sunday night (May 14) so that we can send it out far and wide on Monday, May 15 - the 58th anniversary of the Nakba (when Israel celebrates its independence, and we Palestinians commemorate the ethnic cleansing of our parents and grandparents).

Please read the statement, and send it to any other groups that you think may wish to support it. Please respond as soon as you can if any of the groups you are involved in would wish to add their name as an endorser of this statement.

Thank you for your support,
Hazem Jamjoum
Al-Awda Toronto
--------------------------------

URGENT STATEMENT: FORCED STARVATION IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP - END
CANADIAN COMPLICITY IN ISRAELI WAR CRIMES!

A massive humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are facing forced starvation due to the Israeli siege on the Palestinian economy. Supplies of fuel and cooking gas have been cut-off from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians are dying in hospitals because the Israeli government has prevented the entry of medical supplies. Reports from international,
Israeli and Palestinian press indicate the scope of this current crisis:

*On 4 May, the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza reported that four people in need of dialysis have died because of medical shortages. Only a few days' supply of surgical drugs such as atropine, adrenaline, heparin and lidocaine remain. ("Funds Cut, Gaza Faces a Plague of Health Woes", New York Times, 8 May 2006 and "Patients die as doctors run out of drugs to treat them", Guardian Weekly, 10 May 2006).

*On 9 May, the Israeli company Dor - which provides all petrol and cooking gas to the West Bank and Gaza Strip - announced that it was suspending these fuel supplies. Israel prohibits Palestinians from importing fuel from any alternative source. Moreover, Israel, the US, Canada and other governments have cut all aid and barred the Palestinian Authority from receiving other funds to pay for fuel. ("Fuel supplies running dry; enough for 24 hours only says petroleum committee director" Maan News Agency 10 May 2006).

*The 160,000 Palestinians who work for the Palestinian Authority as teachers, doctors, police and civil servants have not received wages for two months. These wages support thousands of families, estimated at approximately 1/3 of the Palestinian population. This loss of income comes after nearly six years of Israeli attacks and siege. As a consequence, most of these individuals already face massive indebtedness and depleted personal savings. Even the World Bank warned this week that its earlier predictions of a 50% rise in poverty in the occupied territories this year (already at 50% in some areas) - driven by a sharp fall in personal income
and a 23% increase in unemployment - may have been "too rosy".("Patients die as doctors run out of drugs to treat them", Guardian Weekly, 10 May 2006).

*Palestinian officials report that police forces have received no food for two days. Over the last month, police have received as little as a loaf of bread three times a week and a few vegetables on other days. No salaries have been paid for two months. Palestinian prison guards are asking relatives of inmates to prepare food and bring it to the prisons so that prisoners will not starve. ("PA crisis: Prisons running out of food", YNET News, 8 May 2006).

These are the direct consequences of Israeli apartheid policies. Since 1967, Israel has pursued a policy of creating isolated Palestinian bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians are confined to a patchwork of disconnected population islands divided by Israeli settlements, checkpoints and military bases. All aspects of Palestinian life are completely dependent upon Israeli 'permission'. Palestinian
movement in-and-out of towns and villages is controlled by Israeli-issued permits and regulated by soldiers and checkpoints.

Israel completely controls all imports and exports, and the flow of funds into the WB/GS. Massive confiscation of land in the West Bank has destroyed the Palestinian agricultural sector. In the Gaza Strip, Israel even controls where and how Palestinians can fish. The deliberate 'de-development' of Palestinian industry under Israeli occupation means that most Palestinians are dependent upon either the PA or are forced to work in Israel for their survival.

On May 15th we commemorate 58 years since Palestinians were driven out of their homes and land by Zionist aggression. The current situation indicates that this program of ethnic cleansing continues at full speed. While millions of Palestinian refugees wait to return to their homes and land, Israel has literally imprisoned millions more in the open-air prisons that constitute Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip.

Deliberate starvation of the population is a war crime that is now openly embraced by the Canadian government. Canada was the first government in the world to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority. In November last year, the previous Canadian government openly endorsed a proposed visit by Israeli war criminal Ariel Sharon. On 22 March 2006, former Chief of Staff of the Israeli military, Moshe Yaalon - a man who once compared Palestinians to a "cancer" - was permitted entry into Canada. On 15 May
2006, Nefesh B Nefesh, an organization that recruits settlers to continue the program of ethnic cleansing in Palestine is holding a recruitment meeting in Toronto. On 17 May 2006, another war criminal, the head of Israeli Military Intelligence, Zeevi Farkash, will be speaking in Toronto.

And on 18 May 2006, Gen. Doron Almog, a man who was unable to leave his plane in the UK because of a warrant to arrest him for war crimes, will also be speaking in Toronto.

The Canadian government must immediately end its open support for Israeli war crimes and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. We call for an immediate halt to all political and financial ties with the Israeli government until Israeli apartheid ends. Moreover, we call for the immediate and unconditional resumption of aid to the Palestinian Authority. This is a situation that cannot be allowed to continue. The
world cannot insist that the Palestinian right to life is conditional on acquiescence to Israeli apartheid.

posted by Annamarie at 3:56 PM